Vladimir Konstantinovich Bagirov was born in Baku. He won the 1998 World Senior Chess Championship. Awarded the IM title in 1963 and the GM title in 1978, he was a trainer and author of note. He helped to train Garry Kasparov in his early years. In the 1970's Bagirov moved to Latvia. He was 1st= with Eduard Gufeld at Tbilisi 1971, 2nd= at Erevan 1982 and 1st at Cascais 1986.
He died of a heart attack while playing in a chess tournament in Finland in 2000.

wordfunph: GM Vladimir Bagirov's pension in Riga was paltry. Winning the World Senior Championship in 1998 brought Bagirov not only moral satisfaction: the prize, although nothing special, was more than two years of his pension.

wordfunph: When Vladimir Bagirov became a Grandmaster late in life, at the age of 42, "When he phoned home, he was crying with happiness," recalls his widow Iraida Bagirova. "At last I am a
Grandmaster! I am a Grandmaster!" he kept repeating.

TheaN: For a player looking for off-beat (white) openings after a pretty terrible (still ongoing) season Bagirov is definitely worth to study.

Although his Alekhine % is not that major it's pretty high for a black opening, and his NLA % is insane even for white standards, losing only seven in what's supposed to be a 'good game' for black in the followup. Maybe I'm going to check the NLA a bit more.

Abdel Irada: <If you believe some people on this site 1.e4 Nf6 is virtually a forced loss for black!>

I've always had excellent results with the Alekhine.

There's one way to play against it that always concerns me, and which I meet with trepidation, but fortunately most people don't play it.

In fact, most players below 2400 (and occasionally some above it) seem to have little idea how to play against this daringly hypermodern defense. Perhaps their problem is precisely that they listened to all the people who called it a forced loss and never bothered to study its real complexities, taking a "theoretical" advantage for a victory.

The fluid asymmetry of its positions does tend toward decisive results, but it does not lend itself to engine evaluation. Against certain players this also makes it a dangerous surprise, and not infrequently the decision somehow fails to go the way White anticipated. ;-)

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